


Just Take My Hand, Hold it Tight

by Bus_Kids_Burgade (Inthemorninglight)



Series: Never Have to Carry More than You Can Hold [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: And now she's all in, Bus Kids - Freeform, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mama May and her Ducklings, May realizing she somehow ended up with children without knowing it, mama may, post 2x05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 03:10:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7204076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthemorninglight/pseuds/Bus_Kids_Burgade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>May's kids keep her up all night, and that's when she realizes they're /her kids/.<br/>2x05 coda, the bus kids need some love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Take My Hand, Hold it Tight

May was spent. Between Coulson’s gamble with Simmons’s extraction plan and Skye’s attempt to chase down her father, the night had been long and wearing even before the partying started. Trip had raised a toast to Jemma’s return and Bobbi and Mack had celebrated their reunion with several more, increasingly boisterous rounds. May would have liked to take her leave long before the drunken dancing started, but something in her gut held her in place, nursing a vodka tonic and baring witness to Mack and Trip’s attempts to tango.

It had not escaped her attention that neither Skye nor Fitz had joined the celebration, and Jemma was surely feeling their absence even more acutely. She accepted the drinks Trip kept passing her, smiled and laughed and perked up every time Bobbi turned to her, but May had a knew she was present out of politeness more than anything else.

She seemed alright, and Skye had seemed alright, but there was something that kept May in the kitchen even after the dance party had broken up. They’re adults, she chided herself for perhaps the millionth time since she’d first set foot on the BUS. She had no obligation to – and almost certainly _shouldn’t_ – wait up in the event that one of them needed something. She made it a general rule not to encourage people to talk to her. To actively discourage them in some cases.

And yet here she sat, wondering how this had happened and why she allowed it to continue.

She did not have long to wonder, though. Only a few minutes later, Skye slunk into the kitchen, looking pale and tired. She stopped short when she saw May at the table, then continued toward the cereal cabinet with only a brief flick of the eyes in acknowledgment. May wondered if she’d been waiting in the rec room for the others to go to bed.

She said nothing as Skye poured herself a bowl of the most sugary cereal she could find, sloshed some milk over it, and leaned against the counter to gulp it down. There was several minutes of silence apart from the clatter of Skye’s spoon, then a hastily-done scrub of her dishes, then Skye made for the door. May sipped her tonic through pursed lips, boring a hole with her eyes between Skye’s retreating shoulder blades, and just as she reached the door, Skye’s steps faltered.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly and without turning around. “I shouldn’t have… done… that.”

May took another sip of her drink.

Skye let out a heavy breath and brushed her bangs off her forehead, turning around slowly. “It’s just….”

“I would probably have done the same thing,” May said, surprising both of them. Frustrated as she might be, she could not hold Skye’s rebelliousness against her this time. To have what she had been searching for her whole life only blocks away….

“No you wouldn’t have,” Skye sighed, rolling her eyes and dropping heavily into the chair opposite May. “You wouldn’t have let your emotions get in the way of the mission. You would’ve been disciplined.”

That might once have been true. It had also once been blatantly untrue. She couldn’t say for sure what it was anymore.

“How’re you holding up?” May asked instead. She’d heard all the fragile things in Skye’s voice when she’d seen the bodies. It was one thing not to know; it was another thing to know this.

Skye’s expression crumpled in slow motion. She dropped her face into her hand as the tears started to stream. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled into her palm. “This is stupid. I knew what he… it’s just….”

May leaned forward until she could wrap her fingers around Skye’s forearm. “I know. It’s okay.” She gave a brief squeeze and withdrew.

Skye mopped her face with the heel of her hand, let out another long, cleansing breath. “It’s not like I lost anything,” she said, blinking up at the lights.

“Losing the possibility of something is still losing something,” May said sagely. On this matter, she was well-versed.

Skye nodded, seeming to take the words into herself.

May stood and set her empty glass on the counter. “I’m going to get some sleep. It’s been a long day.” She paused beside Skye’s chair to rest a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’ll be alright,” she said, meeting Skye’s dark, questioning eyes with her own sure gaze. She let the back of her fingers skim lightly against Skye’s cheek before heading for the dorms.

It was not a weakness or a mistake, that uncharacteristically gentle touch, she told herself as she meandered through the empty hallways toward her room. She’d seen just how quickly Skye had jumped to catch a glimpse of a man who was almost certainly a monster, just because he might be her father. She needed the reminder that she had people _here_. May would admit without hesitation that she was one of Skye’s people.

She thought everyone had gone to bed, but there was someone in the dorm hallway, cursing incoherently at their keypad.

“Fitz?” she asked, squinting to make him out in the dim light.

He jumped and spun around, focusing on her left shoulder rather than her face. “Yeah?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Everything alright?” It had been a long time since she’d caught him having trouble entering his combination.

“Fine,” he said shortly.

Wordlessly, she stepped forward and punched the code in herself. He didn’t ask how she knew what it was, just stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor. She thought about shrugging and leaving him alone, but she found she couldn’t look away.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, crossing her arms and staring him down.

“Nothing,” he mumbled, but he made no move to escape through his now-open bedroom door.

“Simmons is back,” May ventured. She had watched their awkward, tentative, walking-on-brittle-glass reunion through the lab doors, and it had been painful even from a distance.

His head jerked up, blue eyes darting to her face and away again, wringing his hands in front of him.

“You knew – knew –” the rest of the words didn’t come, but they didn’t need to.

“Yes,” May said simply.

“She _lied_ to me. _You_ lied to me.”

“We had to, and you know that, Fitz,” May said calmly, keeping steady eye-contact. “No one but Coulson and I could know what she was doing. _For her safety._ ”

“You could have… told me… she wasn’t – wouldn’t – forever.”

“We weren’t sure she would come back when it was over,” May admitted, her stomach twisting a little at the look on his face. She stepped forward to put a hand on his shoulder and force him to meet her gaze. “It’s not about you.”

“Of – of course it’s about me,” he snapped.

It only took the barest downturn of her lips to make him look remorseful.

“I’m – I can’t – I don’t want her to… to watch me – to _see_ me – being… not right.” It was an arduous sentence, clearly choked with the sort of emotion he didn’t usually lay bare to May, and he fluttered his left hand beside him for emphasis.

“There’s nothing wrong with the way you are,” May told him firmly, echoing words Phil had said to her seven years ago. “You’re different than you were before, and that’s okay. People are different after trauma. Simmons, too,” she added.

She took her hand from his shoulder and stepped back, waiting for him to go to bed, but he didn’t move.

“I don’t like different,” Fitz mumbled.

“It’s better than trying to force things to be the same when they’re not.” And then when he continued to stand there, maybe waiting for a better explanation, - “Go to bed, Fitz.”

“Goodnight, May,” he mumbled, turning heavily on a heel and shuffling into his room.

May had nearly made it to her room when the distant rattling of chains from the gym pricked her ears. She assumed it was Skye exorcising her feelings, but as she pushed open her door, Skye appeared at the end of the hall. She offered May a tired smile and a “night” before slipping into her room. May sighed and let her door close and lock again before turning for the gym. Would this night never end?

She had guessed what she would find there, but that didn’t make the sight any less surprising.

Jemma Simmons, still wearing the dress pants and stylish sweater she’d escaped from HYDRA in, stood in the middle of the mat throwing swings at a punching bag. Her stance was all wrong, her swings wild and erratic, missing more than they landed. But she kept going after it, meeting it with ferocity each time it swung back in her face until, inebriated, exhausted, and probably a little shell-shocked from her escape, she misjudged an angle and the bag caught her in the stomach.

She hadn’t been able to get swinging with much force, so the impact shouldn’t have done much, but, again, inebriated, exhausted, and maybe more than a little shell-shocked, she staggered back ward a couple steps before dropping down heavily on the mat and wrapping her arms around herself as tears started falling.

May stayed frozen in the shadows by the door, watching her work her way up to sobs, trying to decide if this was something to interrupt or not. Watching her crumble in the middle of the cavernous room pulled something deep in May, though. Forced her to look at something she had not really wanted to face: the way these kids had gotten inside her.

It was easy to see how it had happened with Skye. The girl had practically been begging for a maternal figure from day one, and when May became her SO this situation was fairly unavoidable. She did her best to maintain a professional distance between them for both their sakes, but Skye had no one and so clearly needed someone that May had stopped fighting for that distance a while ago.

And Fitz was not so baffling either, when she took time to think about it. Despite Skye’s thirst for family and Jemma’s iron-clad grip on rules and structure, she had pegged Fitz as most in need of support from day one. He was nervous about being here and lacking confidence in his ability to cope in the field, but a few words from Coulson or herself made a world of difference.

It wasn’t as obvious, but he’d spent his entire life craving a parental connection, too. He had never known his father, and while he was close with his mother, he clearly missed her a lot. He’d probably left home too early and spent the last eight years missing something he’d never been able to get enough of to begin with. May wasn’t sure if it was her stoic discipline (contrasted to Phil’s nurturing instincts) that resembled a paternal relationship to him, or if it was a maternal stand-in he was connecting with, but she’d found early on that filling that role for him was the best way to keep him grounded and moving forward. Skye needed a challenge, Simmons needed a superior, Fitz needed a parent. And somehow the acting had become not so much an act.

Simmons, though. She came from a good home with two doting parents who called her at least once a week. Jemma had probably been the most well-adjusted person on the Bus. But May knew better than anyone how Befores and Afters changed everything. It didn’t matter how much your parents wanted to love you if they didn’t know you anymore, didn’t matter that you had them if you couldn’t be around them. Because this girl crying in the middle of the gym was her, only so much younger and softer and more unprepared than May had been when her After started. She was in the field without any kind of SO, an orphan in SHIELD. And even though she so clearly wanted to, she was not asking for May’s comfort or guidance the way Skye and Fitz had, but she needed it all the same.

And May found that she was going to give it to her without any solicitation or tactical excuses. Because _she_ had brought these kids into this world, and that made them hers for better or for worse.

She deliberately gave sound to her steps so that Jemma would hear her approaching. At once the girl tried to muffle her sobs, draw in her hurt, but it was coming too fast and hard for that now. May knelt beside her and drew her into her arms, rocking gently, smoothing a hand over her hair, holding her so that she would not quake apart. It only took a second for Jemma to cling back.


End file.
